Thread: Page Rank based on host location

My company is wanting to host sites for our international partners in house. I was wondering if hosting the site for say... Spain... would effect our page rank for somone searching google.es.

Page rank has nothing to do with where the host is located.

If you targeting particular region it would be preferred to host website on the servers located in that region - you will get better local SERPs

hi..
thier is nothing to do with the web hosting plan or the server location..

the things wch concerning about the page rank is how mach depth is your site and the importance of the page... that mean to placing relevent informations for the page contents...:sblush:

Page rank has no bearing here, as others mentioned. It has no bearing anywhere. Unless your in the business of selling text links, Page Rank means nothing.

But server location will influence you search rankings.

Take the Spain example. When a user is searching in Google their ip address is checked. If their ip resolves to Spain then Google will skew the results a bit in the favor of sites from Spain.

If the searcher is using Google.es then the results will often get skewed even more in favor of Spanish sites, over a search in Google.com.

Then, if the searcher clicks the "páginas de España" button (pages in Spain), on the .es site, then Google will only show Spanish sites.

When I say Spanish here I mean the country not the language, so not sites from Mexico and other places where Spanish is the dominant language. (that goes for California too )

It determines a site location in one of 3 ways.

1. IP address of the host server. If the host is located in Spain then Google will assume sites on their are Spanish. Could be a .com or a .net, etc.

2. Domain extension. If the top level domain extension of the website is for that country, in this case .es, then Google will assume the site is Spanish.

3. Use Google Webmaster Tools to assign Geo-Location. Google recently added this option to the Webmaster Tools. Link is here Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Better geographic choices for webmasters

A forth option that may become more of a standard in the future is to use Geo Tagging in your Meta tags. I don't know if any search engines are actually looking at this yet but i suspect they will eventually.

Here is a nifty tool for adding geo-location meta tags http://mygeoposition.com/.

Method #3 does not apply to other engines.

Method #1 does not apply to Yahoo. They take the view that a site can very well be hosted anywhere in the world. They are in the business of selling hosting, and likely have servers all over the world. So they know they probably have websites from Zimbabwe hosted in India, or the US or somewhere.

MSN? I don't know. Not that it matters.

Ask? I have no Idea what they are doing.

hmm...so the search results are based on country isnt it? like axemedia saying...

Originally Posted by cyberjudges

hmm...so the search results are based on country isnt it? like axemedia saying...

I believe it has something to do with the different data centers of Google (for example). Search results varies by location, i.e. google.com will show different serp as .com.ph, .com.nl, and so on...

I am confused now because I thought Page Rank effected listing position on Google. But now you're saying that PR has nothing to do with server location but that server location might effect listing position on Google search?

Could someone elaborate on this?

Originally Posted by skyguy

I am confused now because I thought Page Rank effected listing position on Google. But now you're saying that PR has nothing to do with server location but that server location might effect listing position on Google search?

Could someone elaborate on this?

PR does not directly effect search results, in the sense that a pr3 site can outrank a pr5 site. A pr5 site might simply be viewed as more of an authority site than the pr3 site.

Server location can effect results as google wants to server up local sites. Someone searching for a doctor in Candada or laws for Canada, stores etc would want to get a Canadian site and not a US one for instance.

Yes, it will definitely influence your SERPs if you host locally or (ideally if u wanna target local traffic) on a local domain, and not com or net. but again, if u want international traffic, or PR -- it has no influence at all unless u host on a server that also hosts adult sites / warez and it can get penalized by google (i heard bad hosting neighborhood can cause it).

Originally Posted by Lorelei

unless u host on a server that also hosts adult sites / warez and it can get penalized by google (i heard bad hosting neighborhood can cause it).

I could possibly see this if it's on the same IP, not the same server.

Originally Posted by GRIM

I could possibly see this if it's on the same IP, not the same server.

sorry yes, i meant IP that google will penalize.

So... Just to get to the point. Do you think it would be better for exposure to hot our partner websites all on different servers based in their home country? How big would the effect be if we hosted all of our partner sites on our server here in the states but used their local domains like .mx .fr and so on?

Originally Posted by skyguy

So... Just to get to the point. Do you think it would be better for exposure to hot our partner websites all on different servers based in their home country? How big would the effect be if we hosted all of our partner sites on our server here in the states but used their local domains like .mx .fr and so on?

If you are using the country code domain extensions then it does not matter where you host the sites. Domain location appears to over-ride host location.

Originally Posted by skyguy

So... Just to get to the point. Do you think it would be better for exposure to hot our partner websites all on different servers based in their home country? How big would the effect be if we hosted all of our partner sites on our server here in the states but used their local domains like .mx .fr and so on?

I don't think it would be worth the trouble personally as you could also get duplicate content penalties.

Originally Posted by GRIM

I don't think it would be worth the trouble personally as you could also get duplicate content penalties.

Would not be duplicate content if it was in another language :swink:

Originally Posted by axemedia

Would not be duplicate content if it was in another language :swink:

Not every country uses different languages